


bloodtsained teeth and ragged bones

by VenusOurania



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drowning, F/F, Gen, Guilt, Insanity, One-Shot, Torture, character introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25592830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VenusOurania/pseuds/VenusOurania
Summary: Being immortal had always felt like a curse until Lykon died, and never more like one as the iron closed around Quynh.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	bloodtsained teeth and ragged bones

_Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting._

_\- Sébastien Lelivre/Booker (The Old Guard)_

##

Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could remember what colours looked like.

She knew the sky was blue, but she didn’t remember exactly what shade of blue. Or even what blue really looked like. But she also knew that the ocean too was blue in colour. The sky used to change colours depending on the position of the sun, and she remembered watching a fair share of sunsets and sunrises with Andromache. 

She didn’t remember her face. 

Although, Quynh hoped that when-- if, the time came, she would recognise her. She still remembered her voice, after all. She didn’t think she would ever forget it. Couldn’t forget it. It echoed through her. Was carried over in the waves that crashed over her watery grave. 

Andromache was always there, whispering, shouting, screaming, talking. 

Sometimes, between gurgling chokes of breath, she’d lose consciousness. She’d see Andy’s face then. But the features had started to blur. As if seeing them from underwater. 

Her lungs would fill with water, and Andy would whisper, ‘I have never been drowned before,’ she would ask, ‘how does it feel?’

They had broken bones before, though. Several times, sometimes very gruesomely. She broke her bones now. Legs, knees, elbows, hands. Sometimes, if she hit hard enough, she would hear her bones crack against the iron lid.

They felt pain like everyone else does, and her body ached. Sometimes she could pretend it was Andy’s hands encircling her wrists instead of the iron manacles. 

‘That’s not how you throw a proper punch,’ Andromache had told Quynh the first time she’d broken her fingers. She made a fist against the darkness, the water making it hard to find enough momentum. 

She didn’t know how long it had been. She tried to cough, but everything was just- water. It was always water. Her eyes had long since stopped stinging from the saltwater. 

She gasped and swallowed more water as her knee broke. 

‘The longer we live, the faster our healing gets.’ Andy said, as she felt it crack back into place and heal along the break. 

It was always dark. 

Sometimes, during moments of coherence, she wondered what they did with Andy, or what Andy was doing now. If she was looking for her. 

‘Until the end, Quynh.’ Andy would say, would sob. And then her voice would dissolve into the same screams she’d heard the last time she’d breathed in air.

She didn’t know where her lungs found the air that bubbled out of her, she didn’t know how she was alive, why she was alive. Was this what dying felt like? Was this what dying is? One moment stretched out forever because she was cursed? 

Lykon had said it was his time. She envied him. Minutes. That’s what it had taken. A part of her doesn’t want to die, though. Thrumming with anger as surely as the water churns around her. Her nails dragged across the coffin lid, breaking and splitting apart, and she made a screeching noise, gurgling on water.

That part was very small, but there. She wanted out in a way that mattered. Dying would mean they won. And letting them win was the last thing she wanted. What she wanted, with every last part of her being, humming with energy, strung tight with anger and exhaustion, hatred and pain, was _vengeance_. 

She had always been a little bloodthirsty. She and Andy. Or perhaps it had been an acquired taste, she wasn’t really sure after so many years. Maybe there had been a time when killing people had made her uncomfortable. 

She couldn’t remember it now. 

All she could think about anymore was _blood blood blood._

And she remembered the colour of blood. Red. Red. _Red._

##

She could hold her breath for seventeen minutes and twenty nine seconds before she died. Or perhaps died wasn’t the best word here, but it was the closest. 

Andy hated the ocean, the sea. Ships, iron, chains. She hated a lot of things. 

But most of all, she hated holding her breath. Inhaling water. That’s why she forced herself to, again, and again, and again. Quynh was somewhere at the bottom, and she knew she could never _swim_ to her, but that didn’t stop her from _trying_. Unreasonable and ridiculous.

She sometimes forgot how long it had been. 

She wondered if she was meant to feel guilty about the men she interrogated, before tossing into the same sea where Quynh was still lost somewhere in. They rarely knew useful information. They cowered. Screamed, and ran. Some brave souls tried to kill her. 

Quynh. Quynh. Quynh.

Sometimes, she felt as if she had been the one thrown into the sea. Drowning, and drowning, and drowning. 

And then her guilt doubled. 

Quynh was out there, suffering, actually drowning, and Andy was here trying to undermine her suffering, wallowing in self pity. 

Nicky and Joe helped, a little. But she barely noticed. Just because she didn’t die didn’t mean she never got tired. And that was _so inconvenient_ , because Quynh never got a break, and she’d made a promise. 

She woke up gasping for breath some nights, her ears ringing with the sounds of an iron coffin clanging shut. And Quynh’s voice. 

Quynh’s voice was a constant. 

Andy would hear Quynh screaming, pleading, in her last moments as she was shut away forever. Sometimes Quynh would be speaking. Voice low and soft. If Andy was feeling… particularly bad that day, Quynh would whisper. 

She knew Quynh hated her. She knew it whenever she let herself think about it. She hated herself too. Just another thing on the list of things she hated.

Sometimes, she could feel her. Quynh. Sometimes, when she woke up from her not-nightmares, she would cough up saltwater. She would feel insanity edging in, bubbling up in her chest like water filling up the lungs.

Hundreds of years in a cage under the sea. 

‘Just you and me,’ she’d said. ‘Until the end,’ she’d promised. 

Sometimes breaking promises could be as easy as breaking bones. 

**Author's Note:**

> I never actually thought I would write an Old Guard fic, but it's become my fave movie very quickly, and immortal characters have always been very very intriguing to me. They're just so so interesting. How could I not write something about Quynh? Hearing her story was horrifying, and a little fascinating and I wanted to give her psyche a try. Although I am sure I didn't even scratch the surface.


End file.
